Synopsis

The title work, with which the author made his literary debut, opens with the arresting first line, "Yesterday, I bagged a gun." The narrator who delivers the line is Toru Nishikawa, a 21-year-old college student living in Tokyo. The night before, during a heavy rain, he had come upon a man in a suit lying dead in the grass on the edge of a riverbed. When he found a gun fallen at the man's side, he picked it up and brought it home. The television news carries a report of the death several days later. Toru assumes the man committed suicide, but with the gun gone from the scene, the police are investigating it as a homicide. The gun has four bullets left in it. Captivated by its beauty, Toru at first merely polishes it with great care and places it in a leather pouch for safekeeping, but then he begins carrying the piece around with him in the pouch. As time goes by he becomes fixated on the idea that the gun wants to be fired, and he plans a trip into the mountains to fulfill its wish; but before he can get around to this, he happens on a black cat in a neighborhood park, near death from being slashed by someone with a blade, and impulsively fires two bullets into it. As he hurries home, he is spotted by a convenience-store clerk, and he soon receives a visit from the police . . .

Toru's mother had run away when he was six, after which his father put him in a children's home, and he was ultimately raised by foster parents. This upbringing has left him a loner who finds it difficult to open up to others, and he lives all by himself in an apartment. Except for occasional sex with a girl who has another boyfriend, his life as a student has been colorless and uneventful. Against this background, the author deftly delineates Toru's psychological progress from taking the gun into his possession to falling completely under its spell. Besides launching the author's career, this work is important for its links to such later Nakamura titles as The Thief (winner of the 2010 Kenzaburo Oe Prize), Aku to kamen no ruru (The Rules of Evil and the Mask), and Okoku (Kingdom).

The 2012 edition of the book also contains the short story Hi (Fire), in which a woman who set fire to her home at the age of eight, causing her parents to be burned to death, tells her life story to a psychiatrist.

About the Author

Fuminori Nakamura(1977–) hails from Aichi Prefecture in central Japan. After college he supported himself with part-time jobs while setting his sights on becoming a writer. He cites Dostoevsky, Camus, and Kafka as his major influences. His literary debut came in 2002, when he won the Shincho Prize for New Writers for the novella Jū (tr. The Gun, 2016); the work was also short-listed for the Akutagawa Prize. He garnered the Akutagawa in 2005 on his third nomination, for Tsuchi no naka no kodomo (Child in the Ground). In 2010 he received the Kenzaburō Ōe Prize for Suri (tr. The Thief, 2012); Ōe lauded the work, saying “In an era when deep layers of poverty, newly revealed, are raising great social concern, this author understands that fresh perspectives can and must be brought to bear.” With his frequent focus on characters who were born or driven into poverty, Nakamura casts a sharp light on often overlooked aspects of contemporary Japan. The English edition of The Thief won acclaim in 2013 when it became a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was selected as one of the year’s ten best novels by the Wall Street Journal. An English edition of the author’s 2010 novel Aku to kamen no rūru (tr. Evil and the Mask) also appeared in 2013. In 2014 Nakamura was awarded the David L. Goodis Award for his contribution to noir fiction, becoming the first Japanese author to be so honored.www.nakamurafuminori.jpBooks by this author